American Colossus is an excellent book for readers who suffered
through boring history teachers or avoided the subject
completely.

H.W. Brands, a University of Texas history professor, is a
smart, lively writer. American Colossus offers a fast-paced slice
of history that will seem derivative to the knowledgeable but fresh
to the relatively unschooled.

Brands is a productive, talented professor- popularizer who has
published excellent biographies of Presidents Woodrow Wilson,
Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson, a
life of Benjamin Franklin, and thematic histories such as The Age
of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream and
The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s. Another of his books
covers quite a bit of what can be found in American Colossus. That
book, published in 1999, is the still-relevant Masters of
Enterprise: Giants of American Business From John Jacob Astor and
J.P. Morgan to Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey. He supplemented that
book seven years later with The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy
and the Hundred Years' War Over the American Dollar.

The primary theme of his newest book is the tension between
democratic government and corporate capitalism during the 35 years
covered in the book. Brands focuses on John D. Rockefeller, Andrew
Carnegie and J.P. Morgan because of their dominance over vital
industries and their nearly unimaginable personal fortunes.
Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan are wise choices but have been
written about so often so well by so many authors that Brands
cannot offer fresh insights.

Still, he offers a valuable lesson when he explains about the
three tycoons (and their counterparts) that "wealth had always
conferred power, but never had a class of Americans been so wealthy
as the great capitalists of the late nineteenth century, and never
had such a small class wielded such incommensurate power."

Rockefeller, in Brands' words, "held whole regions hostage to
his petroleum monopoly; he browbeat city governments, extorted
favors from the states, and defied the federal government to rein
him in." Morgan's "mastery of finance afforded him more power than
any elected official save the president, and sometimes even more
than the president." Carnegie, with his hundreds of thousands of
employees, controlled more lives than any senator.

Brands' narrative is organized not only around the lives of the
tycoons, but also somewhat chronologically from the end of the
Civil War to the early years of the 20th century.

The recurring theme of the tension between capitalism and
democracy is starkest in Brands' coverage of U.S. expansion beyond
its natural geographical boundaries. For example, the capture of
the Philippines by American troops could have set the stage for
colonial endeavors on every continent. It did not, however, during
the 35 years covered in the book because colonialism nagged at the
consciences of many Americans. They believed that democracy should
allow a foreign population's self-determination, rather than
imposing overseas domination to benefit capitalists expanding their
bank accounts.

Circa 2010, many Americans view their nation as the world's
policeman, as in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not a far piece from
that attitude to renewed colonialism and hoped-for long-term
domination. As a result, Brands demonstrates as the best historians
do that the past is prologue.

Steve Weinberg is the author of eight books, most recently
Taking on the Trust, a dual biography of Ida Tarbell and John D.
Rockefeller.

books@dallasnews.com

American Colossus

The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900

H.W. Brands

(Doubleday, $35) Plan your life

H.W. Brands will receive the Texas Writer Award at 1:30 p.m.
today at the Texas Book Festival in Austin. For details, visit
www.texasbookfestival.org.

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